December 2022 Summaries

GraphOS allows developers to consolidate data from multiple sources into a unified view using Apollo Federation, enabling seamless access to product and review data. By creating separate subgraphs for products and reviews, teams can manage different portions of the schema while maintaining a single supergraph schema that exposes different views to different API consumers. Using Apollo Studio's Contracts feature, developers can configure an endpoint for third-party partners to query, exposing limited partner schemas with specific fields and tags to control access to internal data. This approach enables the creation of a retail supergraph that powers modern retail applications while maintaining flexibility and scalability.

This article discusses the importance of managing time-gated product launches in a GraphQL API. It highlights two approaches to filtering: implicit and explicit, where the logic is handled by the domain service or within the field resolver, respectively. The article also touches on displaying unavailable products, error handling, connecting entity types across subgraphs, and paginating lists when gating products. Additionally, it emphasizes the need for predictable responses from the client application, particularly when dealing with time-gated results that may be filtered from the list within the data source or in the field resolver. The article concludes by encouraging readers to explore a retail supergraph schema and run real queries against it to see the possibilities of Apollo GraphOS in powering modern retail applications.

Apollo, a company that provides supergraph technology for app developers, has announced that it is reducing its team size by approximately 15% due to economic conditions and rapid growth. The decision was made after the company grew headcount 2.5x in about a year but failed to become 2.5x more productive. The reduction will allow the company to refocus on what matters most: giving users and customers what they want, as efficiently as possible, while protecting its independence and serving its open source community. To support departing colleagues, Apollo is providing severance pay, health benefits, equity, immigration support, career support, equipment, and more. The company will hold a company-wide meeting to discuss the changes and answer questions from employees. Despite this difficult decision, Apollo remains confident in its team's resilience and looks forward to continuing to help users do great things in 2023.

A unified API experience is crucial for creating an omnichannel shopping experience, and Apollo GraphOS is the perfect platform to achieve this by connecting all data sources in a supergraph. A federated GraphQL architecture splits services into subgraphs, allowing each team to own a smaller domain while providing a single, unified schema for clients to consume. By defining a user ID as the key field using the `@key` directive, client developers can access and manipulate user data across multiple channels, creating intricate queries that span across many subgraphs. Loyalty programs can also be integrated into the supergraph, allowing for rewards or discounts to be offered based on user actions across different channels. Ultimately, a retail supergraph provides the flexibility and scalability needed to power modern retail applications and deliver a seamless omnichannel shopping experience.

The text discusses how to add a Python service to a GraphQL API using the Strawberry GraphQL library and GraphOS. It explains that a supergraph is a collection of subgraphs, each of which can be built in a different language and framework. The authors use Strawberry to create a Python subgraph that adds a shipping cost field to an existing monolith's `Order` type. They deploy the subgraph to Cloud Router and add it to the GraphOS supergraph, allowing them to query data through its hosted router. The article concludes by highlighting GraphOS's ability to enable developers to extend and build supergraphs using their preferred language.

GraphQL is being used to provide personalized product recommendations in e-commerce applications. This is achieved by adding a new field to the User type that fetches recommended products, and another field to the Product type for fetching related products. The use of GraphQL allows for efficient querying and resolving of data without duplicating business logic or making separate calls to a recommendation service. Apollo Federation is used to link services together in a discovery subgraph, solving the N+1 problem and optimizing queries to use the fewest requests possible. With this schema in place, e-commerce applications can now focus on optimizing the recommendation engine without breaking existing use cases, and consider adding new optional arguments for selecting different types of recommendations.

Implementing a unified e-commerce checkout with GraphQL can help elevate modern retail apps by providing a frictionless experience for shoppers. Apollo GraphOS, an end-to-end supergraph platform, unifies all cloud data and services into a single connected GraphQL schema, allowing developers to save time rewriting code across customer-facing apps and focus on shipping product features. By designing a digital cart with GraphOS, developers can create a focused operation to perform, giving each client team the ability to focus on creating the best UX flow instead of independently writing duplicate logic. The schema includes mutations for adding and removing items from the cart, as well as checkout actions, allowing users to set up their own cart and complete transactions in a standardized way. By unifying checkout experiences across client apps, retailers can capitalize on every revenue opportunity and improve customer satisfaction.

Apollo GraphOS helps modern retail apps by unifying cloud data and services into a single source of truth that frontend developers can query using GraphQL, while backend teams enjoy the flexibility to independently manage relevant portions of the supergraph schema with safety provided by Apollo GraphOS. A retail supergraph exposes a one-stop shop for frontend developers to get the data they need and rapidly build out new product features as capabilities are iteratively exposed by backend engineering teams in the supergraph schema. By leveraging Apollo GraphOS, companies can power essential features of modern retail applications such as unifying e-commerce checkouts, personalizing shopping experiences, creating omnichannel experiences, managing time-gated product launches, and aggregating data with third parties. Volvo has successfully leveraged Apollo GraphOS to streamline its online car shopping experience, improve frontend developer experience, and application performance.

Volvo Cars is on a journey to have at least 50% of their sales online by 2025, requiring a consistent and intuitive user experience across its website. To achieve this goal, they implemented a supergraph with Apollo GraphOS, which unified all cloud data and services into a single connected map that developers can query with GraphQL. This allowed each team to own and manage their data end-to-end, eliminating unplanned breaking changes and enabling frontend developers to find the data they need 99.5% faster. The supergraph also inspired developers to experiment with the data, leading to new features such as company car policies being built out in just two and a half weeks.